Learning lessons from the teachers

Some good news at last!

The Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) recently announced that the number of people joining teacher training courses in England this year exceeded government targets for the first time, even in mathematics.

The mathematics figures are especially heartening due to the shortage of good maths graduates emerging from universities and the importance of this core subject in both primary and secondary education.

The TDA has come to rely on people switching careers and targeted those losing their jobs in the financial services, for example. This year there are 2,897 trainee maths teachers, eight per cent above the target.

The picture for science teachers is equally rosy: 3,701 trainee science teachers or nine per cent over target. Trainees for maths, physics and chemistry receive a £9,000 bursary which has proved to be an incentive.

Even though I think teaching is the best job in the world, I realise that this rise in new entrants to the profession can be attributed, in large measure, to the recession and the shortage of job opportunities elsewhere, particularly for last year’s graduates.

This improved situation should not lead to complacency for it represents the best opportunity in twenty years for government to improve the status of the teaching profession by making entry more competitive.

A more highly-educated teaching workforce would, in turn, do more to improve the standard of education amongst the nation’s children than almost any other piece of education policy could.

Every headteacher has witnessed the transformational effect of the arrival of a brilliant teacher. It is gifted teachers that inspire a love of a subject; it is creative and articulate teachers that influence students; it is intuitive and scholarly teachers that command respect.

While the Queen’s Speech contained some hollow promises for education from the current administration - toughening the Secretary of State's powers to intervene and close failing schools; new guarantees for parents and pupils to demand one-to-one tuition; and school policies to tackle bullying, the Conservatives have indicated that, if elected, they will encourage the setting up of schools by groups of parents and other collectives.

They base this policy on what they deem to be successful models in another country, Sweden. But they could achieve more by studying another Nordic country, Finland, which tops the tables for Science and Reading Literacy and is second only behind Hong Kong for Mathematics in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a triennial survey of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds.

A principal reason for these high levels of attainment is the degree of respect and trust teachers are given in Finland.

One reason for this is that entry to the profession is very competitive allowing the selection of only the most motivated and talented applicants. Only one in eight applicants to teacher training programmes is accepted; each teacher has a Master’s degree. And yet, perhaps surprisingly, teachers’ salaries are roughly comparable to their UK counterparts.

So if it isn’t about money, what is it that makes the job so appealing?

Part of it is the country’s long-term strategic planning that has led to the consistent improvement rather than the confused ideologies of education policy that have been endured in this country and that have resulted in initiative fatigue and a loss of clarity about what matters most in schools.

Read reports about schools in Finland and the clarity is there: high expectations of staff and pupils; optimistic leadership; expert practitioners who inspire, know their pupils well and confidently exercise authority; sufficient trust on the part of government to give schools and teachers full autonomy; good resources and, significantly, investment in Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

Of course, the United Kingdom is very different to Finland (or Sweden) with a much, much larger population and greater social and ethnic diversity but some of these priorities are shared by participants in what has proved to be the most inspired recent educational innovation: the Teach First scheme, in which good graduates are funded to teach before taking another career route.

In their recently published report Lessons from the Front 2009 they call for a greater focus on investment in CPD including "explorative and collaborative opportunities".

They believe that teachers need to have personal ownership of their CPD so that they are personally invested in it. They recommend that all teachers be given an "Annual Enquiry Entitlement" as they feel strongly that too many teachers have stopped being curious and that much more needs to be done to nurture their inquisitiveness so that teachers do not snuff out the curiosity of their pupils.

And their report is not just about teacher development. It also hits home with the following trenchant attack on league tables: We feel that the current system is not fit for measuring accountability or for informing parental choice, and is detrimental to teaching and learning.

The system focuses schools on getting the school results, rather than on helping individual pupils to achieve their potential. Furthermore, teaching and learning suffers as league tables force resources to be unfairly distributed to a minority group that have the best chance of impacting on the school’s position.

Politicians express their desire to have a highly qualified teaching workforce. It remains to be seen if they take note of this testimony of some of our brightest participants.

*Vicky Tuck is Principal of The Cheltenham Ladies' College and a past President of the Girls' Schools Association.